Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam And The American Left

Unholy Alliance by David HorowitzProfessor Todd Gitlin was one of the speakers at the Columbia teach-in against the war in Iraq. A former president of Students for a Democratic Society. Gitlin is a typical veteran of the New Left. In the 1960s, Gitlin was a self-declared “anti-anti-Communist,” choosing not to support the West in its Cold War against the Communist states.According to Gitlin, Vietnam was something like an American original sin. Gitlin summarizes in these words: “For a large bloc of Americans, my age and younger, too young to remember WW2---the generation for whom ‘the war’ meant Vietnam and possibly always would, to the end of our days---the case against patriotism was not an abstraction.Gerda Lerner was in her thirties when the New Left was launched in the wake of Khrushchev’s report on the crimes of Stalin in 1956. She was young enough to join its political generation and became one of its mentors, as the sixties radicals shook off the burdens of their Stalinist past and went back on the attack. Her easy assimilation to its attitudes and doctrines reflected its continuities with the Communist past.By the end of the sixties, the New Left was recognized by its opposition to the anti-Communist Cold War and its Marxist analyses of American society. Like there Communist predecessors, New Leftists viewed America as an imperialist state, the guardian of global system that plundered the poor. Their politics was distinguished by its warm embrace of the Stalinist regimes in Cuba and North Vietnam, and for the Soviet bloc.In 1960, Maurice Zeitlin was a Berkley Marxist and a founding editor of Root and Branch,One of the three radical journals that helped to launch the new radical movement. With fellow editor Robert Scheer (later a columnist at the Los Angeles Times and a prominent opponent of the war in Iraq) , Zeitlin wrote one of the first books hailing the triumph of the Communist revolution in Castro’s Cuba. Zeitlin became a professor of sociology at UCLA, specializing in Chile and writing about “dominant classes”. In 1997, he spoke at a UCLA symposium on twentieth-century utopias, where he returned to the subject of Che Guevara. Zeitlin used the occasion of the UCLA seminar to declare his continuing faith in the Communist cause for which Guevara had died.Leslie Cagan who was to emerge in the anti-Iraq protests as the primary leader of the “moderate” peace coalition. Cagan was selected to head the Coalition United for Peace and Justice by a group of left-wing activists meeting under the auspices of People for the American Way. According to the participants themselves, the organization was created as a public relations effort to deflect criticism that the peace movement was run by the hard-line Communists of International ANSWER, self-styled “Bolsheviks” aligned with North Korea, who had organized all of the national demonstrations to that point.Leslie Cagan was a sixties radical who became an activist in the Communist movement in college, breaking American laws to travel to the Communist World Youth Festival in Bulgaria in 1968. The following year she joined the First Venceremos Brigade, a project of Cuban intelligence that recruited American leftist to help with the sugarcane harvest. Cagan was a leader in other institutions of the Left, including the extreme-left Pacifica radio network, and was an organizer of demonstrations for a nuclear freeze and for solidarity with Communists in Central America in the 1980s and against the Gulf War in 1991.Noam Chomsky is a cult figure among contemporary radicals and their leading intellectual figure. A New Yorker profile has identified him improbably as “one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century,” while the left-wing English Guardian refers to him as the “conscience of a nation.” No other individual had done more to shape the anti-American passions of a generation. When Chomsky speaks on university campuses, which he does frequently, he draws ten times the audiences that other intellectuals and legitimate scholars normally do. Chomsky claims to be an anarchist, which frees him from the burden of having to defend any real-world implementation of his ideas. He defends Marxist dictatorships in Nicaragua, Cuba, Vietnam and other third world countries—like Iraq—when they are engaged in conflicts with the United States.A few more Radicals, Communist, Socialists and organizations that support them.Howard Zinn-historianNorman Mailer-authorJames Weinstein- author—Says socialist should work within the Democratic PartyPaul Berman-authorPalestine Liberation OrganizationNAACPAmerican Civil Liberties UnionMexican American Legal Defense and Educational FundNational Lawyers Guild ( an old Communist front)Ford FoundationSEIUAFSCMEWorld Social ForumRamsey Clark“Not in Our Name”- A front created by Revolutionary Communist Party, a Marxist-Leninist sect aligned with Communist

This book is a tour de force. Written shortly after the inauguration of the Iraq war, it helps to explain to the American mainstream something that is difficult for us to understand -- the psychology of the far Left.To the outsider, it seems those who opposed the Iraq war seemed to do so because of a lack of UN authority, or out of concern for international public opinion. Certainly some opposed for these reasons. However, for those who fuel the far Left, something quite different was at work -- a psychology which fundamentally opposes America as it currently exists.As a former hard leftist himself, Horowitz knows the key players and their key ideas, including where they fall apart. This book, then, is not a "Communist under every rock" kind of a book; it's a dissection of the pathos of the Left. After exposing the fundamental reasons behind Leftist thinking and its historical foundations, Horowitz describes a psychological connection between the Left and Islam. Once he does this, everything comes into focus.Even close observers are bound for some "ah ha" moments with this book. The approach is so much more valuable than a pure polemic because it allows one to "step inside" the mind of the Left, yet do so critically. Once we understand that, for them, America is the greatest of all evils for precisely the reasons that the average American is grateful to live here, it suddenly makes sense why the Left is attracted to our enemies whoever they may be. Once we understand that, to them, "patriotism" is fidelity to an idealized America that is quite the opposite of the one that now exists, we can harmonize their seeming hatred for patriotism and what America stands for.Perhaps the most relevant and helpful insight to me was that to the Left, America's great sin is not its supposed historical atrocities -- it is our inequality of wealth (both within our nation and in comparison to other nations). This is the key that turns the lock, and sadly connects all too well with statements made this current political season.

Although the Communist System has proven itself to be a disastrous system in practice, the idealism that gave rise to that system is still alive and well, in the U.S. and around the world. In addition, this movement has allied itself with Islamic fanatics as both groups want to destroy Israel and America and the democratic, capitalist system. Dozens upon dozens of organizations have formed, organizations with innocent sounding names, to recruit members to help them achieve this agenda. These groups such as the Coalition for World Peace and The Coalition for Peace and Justice, have used Americans' natural good will and loving spirit to deceive them into supporting their agendas. Most of these new recruits are young, impressionable students, who are neither aware of the group's underlying agenda (which is to spread totalitarian Socialism throughout the world) or their roots in Communists organizations of the past. How the radical Left has rationalized their support for the Islamic Terrorists is astonishing and is just one compelling reason to read David Horowitz' book, Unholy Alliance.Unholy Alliance documents, with historical records, the radical left movement in America and around the world since the end of the Second World War, but focuses primarily on the past 20 years. This is the most important book I have read in the last year and demands the attention of every American who believes in democracy and the capitalist system-a system that has provided more personal liberty and more prosperity to more people than any other system in the history of man. Democrats, in particular, must read this book to see how the radical left has hijacked their party and how they are working to undermine America in every way they can. Find out how they use the environmental movement, the peace movement and the anti-globalization movement to accomplish their goals. Please, I urge you, read Unholy Alliance!

Horowitz tells it like it is from an insider's view and exposes a lot of important information that very few are aware of.

Another eye opener !

Maybe a bit bigoted.

One of the mysteries of life is the alliance between Islamist extremists and leftists such as Trotskyist revolutionaries. According to their dogmas they are violently opposed to each other, but everywhere such extremists are to be found giving each other mutual support. This is disguised by the tactic of adopting organisation names which obscure their origins and instead invoke some universal good. For example they will claim to be Anti-War (who isn't?) whilst in reality supporting the most brutal war-makers around. Whatever the answer, understanding this 'Unholy Alliance' will shed light on what truly motivates these extremists.Horowitz's book does not do too much to explore the causes of this bizarre phenomenon but it does a fantastic job of documenting it and will be an eye-opener to almost everyone who reads it, even if already rather well-informed.In my opinion it would be foolish to be active in politics these days without a good understanding of the topic Horowitz covers. I recommend this book most highly.

I ordered this book because I had hoped to garner some further information about cause and effect of unrest. However, Horowitz devotes more time to bitching about other authors and seems determined to 'assassinate' Noam Chomsky. The general trend of the offering is from a very biased right wing point of view presumably directed by AIPAC. Not the standard one expects from " New York Times' best seller.